Corporal punishment ban being reconsidered

Some say the prohibition is too broad and murky.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- Getting Pennsylvania's school districts decision to eliminate paddling from its arsenal of disciplinary tools hasn't been easy.
The state Board of Education is trying to shepherd a corporal-punishment ban through a final leg of regulatory approvals by the end of the year as part of a broader set of regulations governing discipline, student records, rights and responsibilities.
The latest friction was a contentious House Education Committee hearing on Feb. 23 that prompted the board this month to withdraw the regulations in hopes of making changes that will pass legislative muster.
"We could read the tea leaves, and it was clear that many members were not comfortable with the proposed language," said Jim Buckheit, the board's executive director.
The board has concluded that physical punishments are inappropriate, and 28 other states have adopted similar measures.
So the withdrawal was surprising and frustrating for board member Edith Isacke, who heads a committee that has been working for eight years to update the regulations, known in education circles as Chapter 12.
"We're one of the few states that still allows it," Isacke said. "We'll jump through whatever hoops we have to, to get this done."
District decision
Currently, Pennsylvania allows districts to decide whether to use corporal punishment, and a Temple University study conducted several years ago found that roughly 400 of Pennsylvania's 501 school districts prohibit it, Buckheit said.
The policy, however, prohibits corporal punishment of students whose parents register their objections with school administrators.
For 1999-2000, the most recent years for which data are available, the U.S. Education Department reported that a tiny fraction of Pennsylvania's public school children were subjected to corporal punishment -- 407 out of 1.8 million.
During legislative hearings on an earlier draft of the policy in late 2003, lawmakers questioned whether a statewide ban would infringe on local school boards' authority to set discipline policies.
Those arguments resurfaced last month, along with demands for the board to define "corporal punishment" more specifically.
"If I gave a student two cement blocks to hold at arm's length, is that corporal punishment?" said Rep. Ronald E. Miller, R-York. "It's too gray the way it's written now."
Past use
Miller, who is in his mid-50s, said he remembers when corporal punishment was commonly used in schools and considered it to be "darn effective" when he was a youngster.
At the same time, he said he also believes that parents back then were more inclined to reinforce teachers' disciplinary decisions, rather than challenge them, and he is willing to consider any revisions the board makes to the regulations.
"The consequences at home were far greater than they ever were at school," Miller said. "Without parental support, it makes it very, very difficult."
Nadine Block, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Effective Discipline in Columbus, Ohio, said she doesn't believe the regulations need to exhaustively catalogue potential punishments that could be construed as corporal punishment.
Block has suggested to the board that it model the proposed Pennsylvania regulations after a California state law that defines corporal punishment as the "willful infliction of physical pain on a pupil."
"Many states have banned it without ever having listed every possible punishment that could be considered," Block said.
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